


Repercussions

by vega_voices



Series: Sleeps with Butterflies [18]
Category: CSI, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-08
Packaged: 2017-11-28 15:53:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vega_voices/pseuds/vega_voices
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Hopefully no one would comment that Sara had most likely seen the last of the midnight assignment meetings.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repercussions

**Title:** Repercussions  
 **Series:** [Sleeps with Butterflies](http://vega-voices.livejournal.com/tag/sleeps%20with%20butterflies)  
 **Author:** vegawriters  
 **Fandom:** CSI  
 **Pairing:** Grissom/Sara  
 **Rating:** Teen  
 **Timeframe:** Takes place after Dead Doll and through the events of A La Cart.  
 **Disclaimer:** I do not make any money from these stories. Sara Sidle, Gil Grissom, Conrad Ecklie, et al belong to the powers that be at CBS. But I can’t help it if the muses come to dance.

 **Summary:** _Hopefully no one would comment that Sara had most likely seen the last of the midnight assignment meetings._

Sara was curled up in the same place he’d left her three hours ago when he went into his home office to handle some case reviews. Grissom suspected she’d been dozing on and off, but since coming home, she had a tendency to retreat into her head. The doctors and social workers at the hospital had warned him about the potential of this, but to see it in action terrified him. Her usual mode of coping was to work too hard, not sit and stare. He had been prepared to let her manage her issues through work but this … this was disconcerting.

“Sara?” He knelt in front of her, a mug of tea in one hand, his other hand on her foot. “Honey?”

She blinked and came back to him, reaching her good hand out to stroke his cheek. “Hey. Sorry.”

“You need anything?” He set a fresh cup of tea on the end table. He had to get to work but suddenly didn’t want to leave her alone. She had a blanket and access to the remote and the trashy romance novel Nick had brought for her was upside down on her lap. Grissom was slated to work only an eight hour shift and Catherine could handle anything beyond that.

“No.” She shook her head. “No, get on to work. I’ll be right here when you get back.”

“Okay.” He glanced at the dog, who hadn’t moved from Sara’s side. “Take care of her, Hank.” The dog huffed in response. “Call me if you need anything, Sara.”

“I will.”

Grissom sighed and stood up, hating that he was going to be more than a hallway away. But it had been a week since she came home and Sara could take care of herself; if he hovered any closer she’d probably kill him. So he gathered up his kit and pulled on his boots and headed into the lab. The half hour drive was longer than either of them liked, but the privacy they’d found in the older neighborhood was what they’d been seeking. And today, it gave him the chance to find his footing. If the shift was busy, he could dodge Ecklie and his questions. Tomorrow, Sara had her own meeting with the lab director. They weren’t just talking about when she would return to work, but the administrate inquiry into her behavior. Their behavior. In just a day or two, everything would change. They had to make a decision. The thing was, he wasn’t sure what kind of decision he wanted to make.

From the moment he’d kissed her two years ago, when they’d come together and he’d promised her that he was done running, they’d known this moment was coming. In truth, he’d been amazed at how easy it had been to keep their relationship a secret from his team of so called observers. But then again, they were used to Sara’s affections toward him. If they suspected anything, they had the brains to keep their mouths shut. So, life had continued and he and Sara had settled into a life that included a dog and a house and compromise over coffee bean selections and where the meat was stored in the fridge. There was a photo of them on the mantle above the fireplace and she’d helped refurbish his home office while he’d given her his favorite chair to curl up in hers. They walked the dog and ate together at quiet, out of the way restaurants. He knew every rule he was breaking, knew how much trouble he could face if they were discovered, and he didn’t care. He just didn’t care. Because he’d leave the lab and teach biology to freshmen community college students if it meant getting to be with her.

He just hadn’t expected they’d be discovered like this. He’d expected to go to Ecklie, Sara at his side, and discuss the need for one of them to switch shifts. He’d planned on waiting until there was an engagement ring on her finger. Then they’d manage the fallout. What now? What if what happened to her out in the desert had changed everything?

The parking lot was crowded and he was glad for his space near the door. It gave him a chance to avoid stares and conversation on his way to his office. People of course wanted to know about Sara, but what could he tell them? That she woke screaming but couldn’t ask for someone to save her? That the antibiotics made her so sick she couldn’t eat and the pain pills put her into a coma-like state where she couldn’t escape her memories? That she’d stare for hours at the cast on her arm like it was a monster come from under her childhood bed to finally claim its prize? But as person after person stopped him, asking him, all he could say was she was recovering well. She’d be fine and hopefully back at work in a couple of weeks. He glanced at the board and Ecklie was slated out of the office and he let out a breath because it gave him a chance to put his thoughts in order. One more day to pretend that Sara would come back to his shift and he’d wink at her over assignments and before she slipped off to whatever crime had her attention, she’d flash him a smile.

In his office, he ignored the messages from Ecklie and the Undersheriff. He replied to the Sherriff’s message however, before gathering up assignments for the team. They’d need an update on Sara and he couldn’t exactly leave them hanging. These weren’t random people in the lab, these people were her family. These people had saved her life. So he sent a text to his team and all the lab techs scheduled for the night and told them to meet him in the break room at eleven. He’d give out assignments then, update them on Sara, and hopefully they could move on. Hopefully no one would comment that Sara had most likely seen the last of the midnight assignment meetings.

***

  
“Thank you all for being here,” Grissom put his hands in his pockets and looked nervously at the team. Catherine stood near him, Warrick and Nick sat at the table, Greg leaned against the wall and chewed his lip. Of those gathered, Greg had done the most since Sara’s rescue. He’d sat with her while Grissom found a few hours for sleep and even managed to coax food into her. Catherine had kept the team running but Greg was the friend Sara needed. Part of him wanted to assign Greg to sit with Sara all night, but they needed to move on and today was the day to do it. “I want to thank all of you for your work in finding Sara. I know we’re a team and that’s what we do for each other, but it meant a lot to me, personally.” Brass appeared in the doorway and Grissom nodded. “Sara’s home now and healing.” It was all he really felt like he needed to say, but there was still an awkward moment before he nodded at them. “There are bound to be some changes coming, but for right now we just need to continue on. So I’m going to hand out assignments.”

That was the needed cue. The techs disappeared back into their labs, the CSI’s waited for their slips. Jim hovered. Greg got the 419 at the weekly motel down the street. Catherine and Warrick the hooker raid across town. Nick was on paperwork duty. Grissom took the bench with no plans to take any case that would keep him going more than his eight hours. Jim followed him back to his office.

“Don’t you have murderers to get off the street?” Grissom wasn’t sure he was ready to talk yet.

“How’s Sara? Really?”

Despite his reticence to talk, Grissom appreciated how blunt his friend could be. So he shrugged and took off his glasses. Maybe if he looked at the world through a fog, he could handle it better. “How do you think?”

“The nightmares will fade.”

“I just wish she’d eat. Everything makes her sick. She’s lost ten pounds since the kidnapping and it was ten pounds she didn’t have to lose.” Grissom rubbed his eyes.

“Do you know what’s going to happen to her?” Jim crossed his arms. “What kind of repercussions?”

“Technically,” Grissom sighed, “I’m the one that will get reprimanded. I’m the supervisor.”

“But she’ll probably get hit with the worst of it?”

“Probably.” He shrugged. “We’ll deal with it when it happens, Jim. That’s all we can do.”

“Fair enough.” Jim chucked a thumb over his shoulder. “Catch you later.”

Grissom nodded. When Jim had disappeared, he walked back around his desk, sat down, and reached for the top file. Work would keep him occupied.

***

  
She’d moved in the eight hours he’d been gone, but not much. The blanket was re-arranged, the remote on the floor, and the mug of tea had been changed out for a glass of what he assumed was juice. Sara hated milk. There was an unopened bottle of Ensure on the table. She was asleep, passed out in the coma-state the pain pills brought about. So he tucked the blanket around her better and cleaned up, putting the Ensure back in the fridge and letting Hank out into the yard. He didn’t want to hover but didn’t want her alone either, so he took a seat in an opposite chair and tried to read, but kept going over the same passage again and again.

The last time they’d worked a shift together, he’d assigned her to some trash run out at the edge of town that turned out to be a triple. So he’d joined her and after twelve hours of processing decomp and slime, she’d started to laugh that tortured, gallows laugh that kept all crims sane. He’d joined her and then, at home, they’d shared the bath and he’d poured lemons over her, ridding their bodies of the smell. He could still taste the tang of the citrus on her breast, feeling it react to the metal in her nipples.

They’d removed the nipple rings at the hospital. And her belly button ones too. Sand and mud had imbedded in the holes and the infections were still battling the antibiotics. The reality that just one more hour under that sun and he’d be planning her funeral still haunted him. Even now the doctors weren’t sure what, if anything, would come of her body being so broken. How on Earth was he supposed to let her go back into the world that had almost killed her? How could he ever let anyone protect her ever again? Why couldn’t she want to go back to school, get her doctorate, go teach? Anything but solving crimes. Anything.

But the truth was despite her depression, she wanted to return to the lab. This meant they were going to end up on different teams. There was a chance he would be demoted given how long his relationship with Sara had carried on. There were yearly evaluations he’d signed and behavioral issues he’d let slide and while he hadn’t done anything different before or after they’d made the decision to be together, he also could acknowledge that he might have gone easier on her because they were together. At the least he’d be reprimanded. And one of them would have to switch teams.

Logic said that Sara should move to swing. He’d still get to see her at the office and the sleeping schedules weren’t all that different. It was better than balancing days and graves. But he couldn’t trust anyone but Greg and Nick to keep an eye on her. To protect her. How hypocritical. He couldn’t protect her but he expected others to? But no, he had to move to swing. He had to make the change. She’d gone through enough already. She didn’t need everything in her life switched around and tossed in the air. At least if she stayed on graves she’d have the team to keep her steady. She’d be with people they both trusted.

She stirred and he set the book down, ready to help if she needed it. One eye opened and she peered at him and held out her good hand. “Hey …”

“Hey.” He got up and walked across the room to take her hand. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I want you to hold me for a while.” She paused. “After I go to the bathroom.”

“Do you want some help?” He’d become a master at helping with what she needed without her being too uncomfortable. Or maybe she was just resigned to their situation.

“No. I think I got it. I managed when you were gone.” She stood up and checked her balance before shuffling her way to the small bathroom off the main hall. While she was gone he dumped the old blanket in the washing machine and fluffed the pillows on the couch.

She emerged a few minutes later, looking tired and grumpy and muttering about how hard it was to wash her hands at the moment. He handed her the small vial of sanitizer from the coffee table and she rolled her eyes. “And what if I wanted to bitch?”

“Then I’m glad because it means you’re feeling better.” She smiled and he settled onto the couch and opened her arms. She joined him.

“We need to talk about what to tell Ecklie,” she said softly.

She was right. He sighed. “Let me just hold you for a while first.”

“Okay.” She was drifting again and he held her while her breathing evened out. They’d talk later. He was going to move to swing. Yes, the team would be disrupted but at least Sara would be around people they trusted. Hopefully she’d agree with him.  


***

“No.” Okay, so she didn’t agree with him.

She was sitting on a bar stool, leaning against the island in the kitchen while he made a light dinner for them. Her eyes had a bit of the old flash, but she still looked so tired and he worried about how long she could hold herself up. He also knew better than to say anything. If she was up and about, she was going to be up and about and she’d make the decision when it was all too much.

“Why not, Sara?”

“Because me moving from one team to another doesn’t fuck with the team. But when a team gets a new supervisor, all of the chemistry changes. Gil, I can move to swing. It won’t hurt things too much.”

He hated that she was right. But he wanted to win this one. He wanted to know that at least Warrick and Nick and Greg and Brass could protect her. Not some group of detectives and CSIs who didn’t understand her need to leap before she looked. How would they stop her from chasing rabbits? So he appealed to the rough reality of the situation. “And there’s a good chance we won’t have a choice, Sara.” He looked at her. “I’m the one who slept with a subordinate, remember. I could lose my job over this.”

Her silence met his halfway and he could see the terror in her eyes. It wasn’t something she’d ever wanted to happen to either of them, but something they’d allowed themselves to ignore for the last two years. It had been so easy to just fall into their relationship. After a long moment she nodded and kept her eyes down while her good hand pushed imaginary designs across the countertop. “You’re right, Gil. I just …I don’t want to see that happen to you, or to the team.”

“Well, I think we’d both started to think that we could let this go on forever without anyone knowing.”

That brought a bit of a shift of her shoulders and a half-chuckle. “I know I had.” She sighed and looked at him, “Okay, if they transfer you to swing, I won’t throw a fit. But if we have a choice, I should be the one who moves.”

He paused, considering her offer. If he knew Conrad at all, he’d give them an option. “Sara …”

“Gil.” She stared at him and he waited to see what she could come back with. Arguments like these always resulted in some kind of standoff. They were both too stubborn for their own good. “Why is it so important that I stay on graves?”

“My sanity,” he replied instantly, breaking the standoff. “The idea that people whom you trust are watching your back.”

“Gil …” she repeated his name but this time there were tears behind her voice. “Babe …” She was silent for a long time before she nodded. “Okay.” She said softly. “Okay. But I reserve the right to change my mind depending on how our conversations with Ecklie go.” Sara held out her good hand and he walked over and took it, linking their fingers.

“Okay.” He relented. For now. It was going to come up again. But at least she could understand where he was coming from, and that was a start. “You know,” he said after a moment, “We’re lucky to be keeping our jobs.”

“The lab wouldn’t dare get rid of us and you know it. You’re one of the top forensic entomologists in the country and well, I’m your girlfriend.” She smirked.

“You’re a damned good scientist in your own right.” He wasn’t going to let her downplay her skills.

“Sometimes I look at Hodges and remember myself.”

“Something tells me you were more like Wendy.”

“More like Mandy, actually. All tucked away, working on new and interesting things, not telling anyone who I was dating.” She smirked at him. “I went out with Mandy once, when I got here.”

He stared at her, his heart racing. He knew full well that his girlfriend enjoyed women as well, but this was a new development. “What?”

“She was assigned to swing at the time and you were being an idiot. So we went out for drinks and one thing lead to another. It’s never been awkward since.” She shrugged and he shook his head.

“Sara?”

“Yes?”

He was enjoying watching the blush creep across her cheeks. “Is there anyone else in the lab you’ve slept with?”

She swatted at him with her good hand but he knew from the look in her eye that yes, there were others. Now he was curious. “I’m not telling. What, you want to go into your meeting with Ecklie with more knowledge of my misdeeds?”

“Plausible deniability?” He laughed. “Fair enough.”

“Yes.”

He went back to the stove and gave the rice another stir. “Do you think you can eat something?”

“I’ll try.” She shrugged and looked at him. “Gil?”

“Yeah, honey?”

“I’m sorry I wasn’t pregnant.”

It took him a minute to understand that she wasn’t apologizing but that she was truly sorry they had not been expecting a child. And then it took him a minute to respond. “I’m not, Sara.” He looked into her eyes. “Because you were so sick after being out there. Your body would have shut down to protect that pregnancy. So I’m okay that you weren’t because you’re with me right now. That matters to me. And it gives us the chance to talk about kids when we’re ready to talk about them.”

She blinked and looked down. “I’m still amazed you guys found me.”

“I’m still amazed you survived.” Again they stared at each other before he walked back over and kissed her gently. He missed making love to her, missed feeling her body against his, but the doctors had ordered no intimate contact until her pain levels were down. But he could kiss her and kiss her he did, long and passionately and when they broke apart, his hand was on her still sore breast. “Sorry,” he whispered.

“Don’t be. I miss you too.” She trailed her hand down his chest. “I just wish I felt up to letting you make love to me tonight.”

“It’ll happen in its own time, Sara.”

“Go check the rice.” She slid off the stool, catching her balance at the last minute, and wandered to the fridge. Out came the pitcher of orange juice – he’d transferred it from the jar so she didn’t have to fight with lids – and she carefully poured it into the glass. She was going through the drink at a fast rate, which told him just how crappy she felt. But she didn’t complain. She hadn’t complained since she came home and it was starting to scare him. And watching her now, he could see her retreating back inside her head.

“Sara?”

“Hmmm?” She was wandering back to the couch, still lost in thought.

“Where do you want to eat?”

“In here is fine.” Her voice was far away and she was staring out the window. He followed her gaze. It was raining.

***

The tension in the office built with every passing silent moment. They’d come clean about everything, from the relationship back in San Francisco to the on and off again tumult they’d allowed themselves for years, to the conscious choice to be healthy and be together and make a life for themselves two years ago. Ecklie stared at them and Grissom found himself clutching Sara’s hand tighter than he expected. Even now, she was his rock.

“Gil, you’re an idiot.” Ecklie shook his head. “We could have worked this out. You’ve got two supervisors on graves and even then, Catherine didn’t have to know what was happening. We could have just divided up the team assignments. Instead, the two of you let this escalate.” He paused. “You realize that part of the reason Natalie went after you, Sara, is because of your relationship with Grissom.”

Her response was full of her usual curt bluntness. “And you realize that even if I’d been moved to days, this still would have happened.”

Ecklie sighed. Sara tilted her chin at him. Grissom loved that even with the cast and the bruises and the scratches on her face, she was still more ready for a fight than any guy in the lab.

“I do,” Ecklie conceded. “Which is why we aren’t going to take serious action. Gil, we will be doing a peer review on all of your supervisory reviews and evaluations of Sara. A note of reprimand will go into both of your files, stating that you were willfully not in compliance with lab policy. Sara, you will transfer to swing shift and will not be allowed to work on graveyard backlog unless Catherine is the supervisor.” He paused. “You will not be allowed to work any cases together, in any capacity, without a superior or fellow supervisor present. And if any lab rules are broken, further disciplinary action will be taken.” A pause. “Am I understood?”

Grissom nodded. “Yes.” Sara also granted her affirmative response. She signed the disciplinary note for her file without saying another word and then stepped into the hall to wait while Grissom set up the dates he’d be meeting with Ecklie to review the files. At least they were only going back two years and not the full nine, although he knew full well that he deserved to have every review scrutinized. How often, especially at the beginning of her time in Vegas, had he let her off the hook? He signed his own form and finally went looking for his lover, finding her exactly where he knew she’d be.

In the back corner of his office, tucked behind some of the shelves, there was a stool. She was there, wiping tears from her eyes, and when he came close she just looked up at him. “I never thought …”

“Thought what?”

“It would hurt this much to not be working with you.”

Grissom stroked her cheek and leaned in to kiss her, now not caring who saw. They weren’t on the same shift. He could get down on one knee and propose in front of everyone and he’d be in the clear. “But we get to go home together at night.”

“Yeah,” she said softly. “We do.” She stroked her hand down his chest. “Take me home before your shift starts?”

“I’d love to.” He gathered her in his arms and walked her out, feeling her lean against him. He could feel the eyes of the rest of the lab on them as they walked, but he didn’t care. Today this was them. This was the start of something new. Whispers in the hallways be damned.

_Continued in[Fantasy?](http://community.livejournal.com/vega_voices/60121.html)_


End file.
